Occasionally,
people ask me for examples of great online storytelling. Here are some
of my current favorites, which might make for an interesting brown-bag
lunch discussion in any newsroom:
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The Naples (Fla.) Daily News
produced a huge multimedia project on affordable housing, certainly the
hottest topic in that community. The paper produced a mapped database of
80,000 homes and condos that were sold there. Readers can click on each one
and get a sales history, photo and description. The project includes
videos, podcasts and more.
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Google Earth 4.0 and Google Sketchup -- Wait until you see what's new.
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Time magazine explains why Afghanistan is deadlier than ever for troops. It is important storytelling at a time when little seems to be reported out of Afghanistan.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just launched a video podcast ("vodcast").
Watch this and ask yourself what the 2008 American presidential
election is going to be like. Trust me, vodcasting will be
everywhere. It is a way for the individual
to reach the public without being filtered by journalists and without
paying for commercial time.
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"Final Salute" -- The Rocky Mountain News' Pulitzer Prize-winning photo/video essay online.
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"Alaska Priest" -- Damon Winter's Pulitzer Prize finalist entry about remote Alaskan villages dealing with a child molestation case in its Catholic church.
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The (Tacoma, Wash.) News Tribune -- A small paper that has made a big commitment to interactives. The paper's sports blog regularly includes audio. Here is an inside interview on how it is done.
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The U.S. Geological Society is soliciting citizens
to map earthquakes on its "Did You Feel it?" page. It is a good example
of user-generated content. How could media sites use this idea to map a
common experiences?
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AZCentral posts regularly updated three-minute video newscasts from its TV partner, 12News.
Bald Eagle May Soon Be Off Endangered List
One of the
interesting spectacles in my neighborhood these days is a pair of
nesting bald eagles who have taken up residence in a
pine tree of the nearby cemetery. It is the second nesting pair that I know of within a
quarter-mile of my St. Petersburg, Fla., home.
The return of the bald eagle is so
great nationwide that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service might remove the bald eagle from the endangered-species list in the lower 48 states soon. The public comment period on the matter ended this week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (via an Environmental Protection Agency federal register) says:
The bald eagle
population in the lower 48 states has increased from approximately 487
active nests in 1963, to an estimated minimum 7,066 breeding pairs
today.
The recovery of the
bald eagle is due in part to habitat protection and management actions,
and the reduction in levels of persistent organochlorine pesticides
(such as DDT) occurring in the environment.
The Boston Globe reported:
Said [Fish and Wildlife] agency spokesman Jane Hendron, "I believe the
best way to characterize it is we are working expeditiously... to
move forward with a final decision."
Even
if the eagle is removed from the list, it would still be protected
under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which prohibits the
possession, sale, disturbance or collection of eagles and is still on [some] states' "endangered" list[s]. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is
also drafting eagle -anagement guidelines and will continue to monitor
the species once it is removed from the list.
The
Fish and Wildlife Service says the recovery of the bald eagle can best be demonstrated by how widely the eagles are found nationwide:
The bald eagle has
successfully recovered throughout its range. In 1984, 13 of the lower
48 states had no nesting pairs of bald eagles, and 73 percent of the
nesting pairs were located within only six states: Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon. By 1996, all but two states supported nesting pairs. By 2000, these six states had a
reduced share of 59 percent of all nesting pairs, due to increased
nesting in other States. In 2000, there were an estimated 6,471
occupied breeding areas.
I found this passage from the Fish and Wildlife Service's background page especially interesting [PDF]:
We exercise very
strict control over the use of bald eagles or their parts for
scientific, education and Native American religious activities. To
respond to the religious needs of Native Americans, we established the National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colo.,
which serves as a collection point for dead eagles.
As a matter of
policy, all Service units transfer salvaged bald eagle parts and
carcasses to this repository. Members of federally recognized tribes
can obtain a permit from us authorizing them to receive and possess
whole eagles, parts or feathers from the repository for religious
purposes.
After removal from protection under the [Endangered Species Act], we will still
have the ability to issue permits for limited exhibition and education
purposes, selected research work, and other special purposes, including
Native American religious use, consistent with federal regulations
implementing the [Bald and Gold Eagle Protection Act] (50 [Code of Federal Regulations] part 22). We will not issue these
permits if they are incompatible with the preservation of the bald
eagle.
Eagle Cam
You can watch a couple of newborn bald eagle chicks on Vancouver Island live, on camera, here.
Billion-Dollar Disasters
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has built an impressive and useful site [PDF], of billion-dollar weather disasters, which maps and describes the weather disasters that have had the greatest economic impact on the United States since 1980:
The U.S. has sustained 67 weather-related disasters during the
1980-2005 period in which overall damages and costs reached or exceeded $1 billion at the time of the event. This report does not contain any
events that had unadjusted damages/losses less than $1 billion dollars
and then subsequently may have reached $1 billion after applying the
(Gross National Product) GNP inflation/wealth index. Fifty-eight of
these disasters occurred since 1988 with total unadjusted damages/costs
exceeding $380 billion. Seven events occurred in 1998 alone -- the most
for any year in the summary period, though other years have recorded
higher damage totals.
About half of the billion-dollar weather events were not on coasts. Click here to see a map of which states have suffered billion-dollar losses from storms. (A note: It is a very large PDF file.) Florida, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina lead the list. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina
are not far behind.
We normally think of hurricanes when we think of
billion-dollar losses, but you will see droughts, tornadoes, fires and
heat waves on the list, too.
Top-Notch Toilets
USA Today says airports around the country are pumping money into improving their restrooms.
The story says you will see improvements at these places:
Charlotte, [N.C.]
Restroom attendants on Concourse E are cleaning up spills and handing
out towels, mints, mouthwash and feminine products. They're part of a
test program that has improved sanitation and been warmly received by
passengers, spokeswoman Haley Gentry says.
Newark, [N.J.] The port authority last year increased its Newark
budget for extra bathroom attendants in Terminal B. They immediately
pick up paper, dry countertops and mop up water on the floor during
peak flight times, [Lysa] Scully, [of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which operates the three major New York City-area airports,] says.
Fort Smith, Ark.
Restrooms with dried flower arrangements on a center counter and
touchless sinks and toilets were last year named the nation's best
public bathrooms by Cintas, which sells bathroom supplies. This year,
sparkling clean bathrooms at the Quad Cities airport in Moline, Ill., were named the fifth-best in the U.S.
"It's
important for good health and good business to have a clean restroom,"
Cintas spokesman Mike Wallner says. "An outstanding restroom makes it
more of an experience than an inconvenience."
Click here to see how often the busiest airports clean their bathrooms.
The VFW Welcomes Women and Gays
The Poynter Summer
Fellowship for Young Journalists, a collection of the 32 brightest new journalists around, began this month at the Institute. The fellows, all of whom are recent college graduates, spend six weeks here at Poynter to study reporting, writing, design and photography with Poynter faculty and top journalists from around the country.
They focus specifically on ethics, diversity and collaboration, and they're assigned to teams that work on a specific beat in St. Petersburg while they are here. Right now, they're in the process of editing and
publishing projects they've been working on for the past few days. The first batch of projects, which are produced on the program's Web site at the end of each week, have already been published.
Here is a project that I thought you might find especially interesting and easy to localize. Leann Frola, JD Malone, Elie Gardner and Alex Fong
stopped by a local VFW post and found members welcoming gay and women
vets.
Local VFW membership is down these days, the team reported, and opening its doors to
those whom it once might have shunned is a way for the St. Petersburg post to survive.
They also found that younger vets have been walking through the doors of the local VFW these days, as well.
Here is a collection of the excellent stories posted this week by these students and their summer colleagues. Check back every week from now until mid-July for more.
And keep reminding yourself: These young folks will be ready for hire in just a few weeks.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas,
edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites,
as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes
directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be
provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends
upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors
and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
